Environment Files

We have a first-class support for environment files. Known as .env files. This feature allows you to load environment variables from environment files and make them available as variables in the shell context.

This is possible through the envload builtin command.

Quick Example

You get started, define your variables in a .env file. .env:

KEY=value

Then use the loadenv builtin command: script.sh:

loadenv

echo $KEY

# value

Environment file format

We support the standard format of .env files. This includes simple keys, quoting, variable references and yaml format.

# comments are supported
KEY=value # inline comments are supported too

# quotes
KEY="foo bar baz"
KEY='foo bar baz'

# reference other keys
KEY=$KEY
KEY=${KEY}
KEY="$KEY"
KEY="${KEY}"

YAML format

We also support the yaml format:

# comments are supported
KEY: value # inline comments are supported too

# quotes
KEY: "foo bar baz"
KEY: 'foo bar baz'

# reference other keys
KEY: $KEY
KEY: ${KEY}
KEY: "$KEY"
KEY: "${KEY}"

Command Usage

The command loadenv is very streightforward. When you do not pass any arguments. it will default to load .env file in current workin directory.

loadenv # loads .env in CWD

You can pass one or many file paths. In this case, the order of the files matters. Because files that come last override keys in files that come first.

loadenv file.env file2.yaml file3.env

Exporting variables

By default, the variables are only available in the current shell context. They are not exported to child processes. For example:

.env:

NAME=bunster

In your script:

loadenv

bash -c 'echo env:$NAME'
echo var:$NAME

This will output:

env:
var:bunster

To export them, you can use the -X flag to export them:

loadenv -X

bash -c 'echo env:$NAME'
echo var:$NAME

This will output:

env:bunster
var:bunster